hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my comics in literature class. we had to do a research paper on a topic we’d discussed in class and then accompany it with a comic with a relevant subject. my paper was about hyper-sexualization of women in comic books, but i decided to broaden it out here as well as personalize it and make myself the subject and discuss something i’ve been subjected to in the convention circuit and on the internet as well as thousands of other women, as well as give a cue to thought about how the comic book industry as well as the video game industry and even just media in general (all of which are male dominated) push such ridiculous pressures onto girls and women.
also, it feels kind of silly to have to add this since i hope it’s obvious, but i am very aware that there are men that don’t subscribe to this attitude, and am incredibly grateful that these issues are brought to light to people other than the ones that are subjected to it.
anyway haha i have literally been staring at this for 9 hours i don’t even know which direction is up anymore. thanks for reading!!!
1.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says ‘No, you are beautiful.’
I wonder why I cannot be both.
He kisses me
hard.
2.
My college theater professor once told me
that despite my talent,
I would never be cast as a romantic lead.
We do plays that involve singing animals
and children with the ability to fly,
but apparently no one
has enough willing suspension of disbelief
to go with anyone loving a fat girl.
I daydream regularly
about fucking my boyfriend vigorously on his front lawn.
3.
On the mornings I do not feel pretty,
while he is still asleep,
I sit on the floor and check the pockets of his skinny jeans for motive,
for a punchline,
for other girls’ phone numbers.
4.
When we hold hands in public,
I wonder if he notices the looks —
like he is handling a parade balloon on a crowded sidewalk;
if he notices that my hands are now made of rope.
5.
Dear Cosmo: Fuck you.
I will not take sex tips from you
on how to please a man you think I do not deserve.
6.
He tells me he loves me with the lights on.
7.
I can cup his hip bone in my hand,
feel his ribs without pressing very hard at all.
He does not believe me when I tell him he is beautiful.
Sometimes I fear the day he does will be the day he leaves.
8.
The cute hipster girl at the coffee shop
assumes we are just friends
and flirts over the counter.
I spend the next two weeks
mentally replacing myself with her
in all of our photographs.
When I admit this to him
we spend the evening taking new photos together.
He will not let me delete a single one of them.
9.
The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire.
Fucking me does not require an asterisk.
Loving me is not a fetish.
Finding me beautiful is not a novelty.
I am not a fucking novelty.
10.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says, ‘No. You are so much more’,
and kisses me
hard.
| — | Rachel Wiley (via diplosomia) |
I’ve always been chubby. Always.
When I was about seven, I started getting these episodes where my heart would race and I would get light headed and even faint. My mom would call the pediatrician and he’d tell us to come in, but by the time we got there my heart had slowed down and, according to him, he had no way to check what it was.
He advised my mom to put me on a healthier diet and make me exercise more because it was probably my weight, even though I wasn’t that much overweight and I practiced softball for an hour a day.
So my mom did as he said and I didn’t really lose any weight. Also, the episodes continued to happen. They always ended before we could get to the doctor’s office. The doctor never ordered any kind of tests on my heart, though he did test my thyroid and scold my mom for apparently not trying hard enough to get me to lose weight.
This went on for five years. I’d be laying in bed and suddenly my heart would start beating so hard, my shirt would move. I’d stand up out of the bathtub and black out, causing me to fall out of the tub. I’d be playing softball or in gym class or just playing with my friends and suddenly I’d get light headed or my heart would race.
There would be several fruitless calls or visits to my doctor, who would insist that it was complications due to my weight and they would continue until I was a normal size. My mom was scolded. I was body shamed. I had blood drawn twice a year to test my thyroid. And yet the episodes continued.
Then, the week of my 12th birthday—also, the week I started my very first period— I didn’t want to go to school because the day before, a girl who had seen me in the bathroom had told everybody that I had started my period. In 6th grade, being chubby with frizzy hair and huge teeth, that was pretty much a social death sentence and I was mocked mercilessly for it.
So the next morning I woke up and begged my mom not to let me go to school. I cried and begged and she still insisted I go. So I went to change when suddenly, I felt an attack hit and I blacked out and fell, knocking things off of my desk. My mother heard the noise and found me dazed on the floor. I told her I could feel my heart beating hard again. You could see my shirt moving over my chest from how hard and fast my heart was beating.
My mom loaded me up in the car and took me to the pediatrician. This time, my heart continued to race and I remained light headed. They had to bring out a wheel chair to get me into the doctors office because I was too dizzy and weak to walk.
Once there, I was ushered into an examination room and I just laid down on the table. I couldn’t even sit up. They took my blood pressure and of course it was high, but they took it as a sign that my mother was feeding me salty, fatty foods instead of fruits and vegetables. they made me wait on the table for like two hours until an EKG machine was available in the office. I fell asleep for like half an hour because I was EXHAUSTED. Eventually, they sent us to the ER.
At the ER, they ushered me into a small little room with an EKG machine. They hooked it up and like fifteen seconds later, the nurse flipped shit. She called a “code blue” and about fifteen nurses rushed into this tiny room and then they raced me to another part of the ER. Didn’t tell my mom what was going on, just left her there and took off with me in the bed. They hooked me up to a ton of IVs and monitors and gave me medication to slow my heart that caused me to vomit everywhere.
Then they did a bunch of x-rays and EKG tests and kept me overnight. They found out that I had WPW, which is a tiny hole in the walls of the chambers of the heart, which caused my heart to beat so rapidly. They explained to my parents that this hadn’t happened as an effect of diet or habit, but that I had been born with this hole.
They also told her that me playing softball and being active with this condition was incredibly dangerous, because this is the condition that causes athletes to die on the field for seemingly no reason. The heart starts beating fast through exertion, the signals that cause the heart to beat get all scrambled and the heart beats so fast that it just gives out.
And the reason this particular attack had lasted so long was because it had come dangerously close to causing my heart to give out, which would have killed me. I ended up having to have heart surgery, something that should have been done 5 years earlier when I first started having the attacks.
But, because I was overweight, my doctor was more concerned with thinning me down than providing me with the treatment I needed to live a healthy life.
things you can mad at instead of the ~*obesity epidemic*~
- the poverty epidemic
- the unemployment epidemic
- the racism epidemic
- the white man epidemic
- the transmisogyny epidemic
- the u.s. drone epidemic
- the expensive education epidemic
- the rapist epidemic
- the colonialist epidemic
- the victim blaming epidemic
- the bootstraps epidemic
- the condescending yuppie epidemic
Each one of these women is an Olympic athlete. Let’s challenge the notion that thinness is the only indicator of health and fitness.
This needs to be reblogged again.
| — |
Study: Male Jurors More Likely To Find Heavier Women Guilty - ThinkProgress (via brooklynmutt)
This does not surprise me at all. (via ollieramblings) |
1. Dan Savage hates trans people and uses transphobic slurs.
“Children have a right to some stability and constancy from the adults in their lives. Perhaps I’m a transphobic bigot, but I honestly think waiting a measly 36 months to cut your dick is a sacrifice any father should be willing to make for his 15-year-old son. Call me old-fashioned.
Unfortunately, your ex wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice (selfish tranny!), or it never occurred to him to make that sacrifice (stupid tranny!)…. If your son can’t deal with having his dad/mom/whatever around right now, support him and tell his dad/mom/whatever to leave the two of you alone for the time being.”
2. Dan Savage believes that bisexuals do not and should not exist.
“I’m not saying bi guys are bad people, or they don’t make great one-night stands. Bushes, bathhouses, and sleazy gay bars are crawling with bi guys. But if a guy wants more, he’ll have an easier time getting it from another gay man.”
3. Dan Savage has admonished women for not putting up with their partner’s sexual desires and has criticized female rape survivors’ stories.
“There the guy was, boned for you, and he was brave enough to put his desires out there, to make himself vulnerable (which is what the ladies are always saying they want, right?), and you lobbed the ol’ “What?!?” bomb at him and made him feel like a freak. Is it any wonder that he quickly moved on to “other things” and, one would hope, better sex partners?”
“I’m extremely sorry that you were raped, DRARS, although your baseless accusations of rape make me doubt you when you claim to be a survivor of rape. The feminist bloggers are going to accuse me of thought crimes: If a woman says she was raped then, by God, she was raped. (Tell it to the lacrosse team.) But if my reaction to your letter is a thought crime, I can only plead entrapment: I wouldn’t have had these illegal thoughts if you hadn’t sent me such a stupid letter in the first place… Finally, DRARS, I hereby withdraw my consent for you to read Savage Love. If you continue to read my column against my will, well, we all know what word to apply to your actions.”
4. Dan Savage thinks that racist gay white men are less of a threat to African-Americans than homophobic African-Americans are to gay people.
“I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.”
EDIT: Here are some more lovely gems from our resident asshole Dan Savage on his rampant hatred for everything not white, male, and gay:
5. Dan Savage thinks asexuals are secretly “fags”.
“I appreciate the feedback, Stephanie, and I’m sorry I offended you. But… um… I couldn’t help but think, as I read your letter, that your boyfriend is either a fool or a fag. But if it works for you guys—if a romantic relationship devoid of sexual attraction and activity works for you guys—then it works for you guys. Who am I to argue with success?”
6. Dan Savage is fatphobic.
“First off, LARDASS, you neglected to include a sign-off, forcing me to create one for you. I tried to create one that captured the spirit and tone of your letter, and I think I did pretty well… I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact—being heavy is a health risk; rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly—characterized as ‘hate speech.’”
